A couple weeks ago, we killed some fine trees, dipped deep into the ink wells and used some of our precious pixels in our little piece of cyberspace to tell you all about a terrible, terrible sin committed by the UConn women's basketball team. UCLA fiasco another
bit of gender inequityWe told you all about why the name Nykesha Sales should go down in history with the likes of Adolph Hitler, Charles Manson and the guy who invented artificial turf.
Well, one of the best things about time is that it gives us this great thing called perspective. And while I don't regret saying my piece about how coaches and league commissioners colluding to create an artificial record is bad for sports, recent events bring me to this: Who really cares?
There are much more important annoying things to complain about. El Niño. People who talk about El Niño. People who say "Alrighteee then." South Park becoming mainstream. And most of all, homer timers determining the outcome of tournament basketball games.
Now, I'm not much of a fan of UCLA athletics. The Bruins just win too damned much in too many different sports for my taste, and they seem to expect it. They also get caught in their share of stunts like leasing big, bad vehicles for basketball recruits and big, bad Australian pitchers for the softball team.
OK, back to the point: No team deserves to get jobbed the way the Uclans did in the women's NCAA tournament. When you are playing for the right to advance in a national championship tournament, a good ol' boy official who works all the opponents' games shouldn't be working the clock.
You're probably tired of hearing this, but it's a gender issue. This would never happen in the men's tournament because it's set up so that no one has "home" games. The women's tournament, like the NIT, needs to have true home games for attendance reasons (would 10,000 have showed up for last night's Hawaii-Fresno State game if it was played in, say, Boise, Idaho?). They could play men's March Madness games in Antarctica and still draw huge crowds.
Nykesha Sales also overshadowed another more important story recently. In the premier issue of ESPN The Magazine, there was much hubbub over an article saying Sales didn't actually break the UConn career scoring mark because she was credited for two points she didn't score earlier in the season.
BY far, the more important piece in the publication's debut is the feature on Tommy Morrison, the former heavyweight champion who has been diagnosed as HIV positive. The reason this story is important is that it highlights how ignorant many people remain about HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Even some who are HIV positive, like Morrison.
According to the article, Morrison has continued to live a high-risk lifestyle which could lead to a quicker onset of full-blown AIDS and eventual death. He is not undergoing normal medical treatments, and judging by the pictures accompanying the article he may already have AIDS. Incredibly, he and his wife have unprotected sex and neither of them worries about the virus being passed on to her. Morrison is quoted in the article as saying the virus can't be passed from man to woman, which isn't true.
The only happy part of this story is that the couple has no children to orphan . . .
So baseball welcomed media mogul Rupert Murdoch into its ownership fold with open arms.
"I believe the synergism all the way around is very useful," acting commissioner Bud Selig said.
Forgive my cynicism regarding synergism, but it looks more like conflict of interest (something Selig, who also owns the Milwaukee Brewers, knows a little bit about) when Murdoch has a de facto financial interest in most of the other teams in the league. A disaster waiting to happen.
Dave Reardon is a magazine editor and freelance
writer who has covered Hawaii sports since 1977.
He can be reached via the Star-Bulletin or
by email at dreardon@hmsa.com.
